Seems like somebody wins the World Series every night nowadays, at least on the TV highlights shows, where no manner of walk-off hit fails to spark the kind of 25-man running, jumping, tumbling, laughing celebration once traditionally reserved for once-in-a-lifetime moments in October.

It's exhausting.

Some guy sends a ninth-inning bloop over shortstop to enable Minnesota to squeak past Texas, 4-3, and the entire infield is turned into a re-enactment of Lindbergh landing in Paris.

It is July, right?

This mock pandemonium had no known purpose (other than fleshing out the same highlights shows) until this week, when walk-off wackiness became Modern Method No. 4,883 by which major league baseball players can reliably disable themselves. The Chicago Cubs placed starting pitcher Ryan Dempster on the disabled list Tuesday with a pulled celebration.

Scrambling to join teammates celebrating a titanic victory Sunday against Milwaukee (it pulled the Cubs within two games of first place with only 82 games left to play), Dempster tripped over the dugout rail and broke his big toe.

Manager Lou Piniella called it a "freakish" thing, the best evidence yet that Piniella is mellowing with age. Either that or freakish is now an accepted synonym for stupid.

To be perfectly unclear, I'm not sure how I feel about demonstrations of joyfulness in baseball because they are probably too few. It's better to have people pounding each about the head, neck, ears and back than slinking into the dugout to calculate the game's impact on their various incentive clauses. That said, there's a lot going on postgame that is either a bit much or a bit odd.

Still again, this, too, is a matter of historical perspective, and not so much the history of baseball as the history of stoicism. As my friend the esteemed retired baseball writer Paul Meyer points out, when Don Larsen pitched a perfect game in the World Series, catcher Yogi Berra ran to Larsen and jumped into his arms, but the remainder of the celebration was subdued and the New York Yankees players went quickly to the clubhouse.

"I don't remember that there was any mosh pit," Meyer growled, "and that was a perfect $#@%! game in the World $#@! Series!"

True, but it was 1956, and there was beer in the clubhouse.

There was beer in the clubhouse for the next quarter-century as well, but when clubs began extending their alcohol awareness programs throughout the stadiums, a strange thing started happening. Suddenly, when the game ended, the players did not retire eagerly to the clubhouse, but walked almost zombie-like onto the field to form a kind of receiving line.

In lieu of the full five-alarm celebration after a game-ending hit, the more common securing of the final out now requires players in the dugout and bullpen to join players on the field where they form two lines and greet each other like Little Leaguers going, "nice game nice game nice game nice game nice game nice game nice game."

Managers seem to enjoy this about as much as they would enjoy being in an actual receiving line at a wedding where they don't know anybody. It's all they can do not to blurt out, "How ya doin' ... where's the bar?"

Occasionally -- and this is becoming more and more frequent -- players will prep for the receiving line by forming four- or five-man units that jump into each other.

After a 6-2 Pirates victory Tuesday in Houston, in fact, a picture on page D-3 of One of America's Great Sports Sections the next day captured five Pirates players -- Jack Wilson, Andrew McCutchen, Brandon Moss, Ramon Vazquez and Garrett Jones -- all falling away from just such a leaping celebration. Somehow, our editing desk refrained from writing the caption: "First one to land gets traded."

No one begrudges the Pirates a little celebrating, as wins are hard to come by. There probably won't be another on the trip that continues tonight in Philadelphia.

But I don't think I need to see Yankees jumping around like they won a Game 7 when it's July and it's the Twins.

"Yeah, baby!" they seem to be saying, "We did exactly what they're paying us $200 million to do!"

That's the baseball equivalent of Ray Lewis pounding his chest after a tackle. Isn't that merely what he's supposed to do?

Lastings Milledge, a key figure in last week's Nyjer Morgan trade, took a severe brow-beating from traditionalists when he high-fived a row of fans on his way to left field after homering for the New York Mets in 2006. I'm not real clear on what's wrong with that. No one seems to have any bad feelings for the Lambeau Leap, after all.

Joyfulness is acceptable, possibly being my point, but the team activities in the postgame need further, faster evolution. For the time being, I recommend the Milwaukee Brewers' method for the moments after getting the last out. They simply untuck their shirts as though at the end of a work day, but even this offends some.

The worst thing right now, and probably at any point, would be for Bud Selig to look into proper postgame protocol, because I don't want the team with the wildest meaningless celebration based on an ESPN online poll getting home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.

I wish that was a joke.